


Infinity (and Beyond)

by Lissadiane



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Spirit World, Temporary Character Death, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 04:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16256435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lissadiane/pseuds/Lissadiane
Summary: Bucky had always thought that Wakanda was just about the closest thing to Heaven that he’d ever find, so it makes sense that he’d wind up here, at a celestial version of it, at the end of everything.He sits up and closes his eyes as a soft breeze blows over his face and through his hair and he thinks maybe if he’d known that this is what death would be like, he’d have let it come earlier.





	Infinity (and Beyond)

**Author's Note:**

> I struggled really hard with this mainly because I didn't want to name it after a line from Toy Story, but every time I opened the file, I mumbled "to infinity, and beyond!" to myself, and who am I to fight against fate?
> 
> Dedicated to [ Skoosie](https://pantstomatch.tumblr.com) for reading it and liking it even when it was a trainwreck (and possibly still is one) and to [Villainny](http://villainny.tumblr.com/) for daily inspiration and dragging me into this trainwreck of a ship that I now love so much. You are the worst (and also, thank you).

Bucky opens his eyes and the sky is a technicolour dream, a watercolour mess of purples, indigos and blues, offset with brightly shining stars.

There is a tree nearby and it’s full of panthers, watching him with starlight in their eyes.

And the very next thing he notices is that he’s whole again – two hands, two arms, and no aching, mechanical tug in his shoulder when he moves.

Bucky had always thought that Wakanda was just about the closest thing to Heaven that he’d ever find, so it makes sense that he’d wind up here, at a celestial version of it, at the end of everything.

He sits up and closes his eyes as a soft breeze blows over his face and through his hair and he thinks maybe if he’d known that this is what death would be like, he’d have let it come earlier.

He stands up and looks around, recognizing the world, for all that it’s now bathed in purples and blues. It’s Wakanda like he knew it, but sharper, quieter. More peaceful. He can see others in the distance, can hear whispers of their panicked cries as they wake to find themselves here, but it washes over him and away like the breeze.

Bucky has spent so long looking for peace, he’s not about to cry when he finally gets it.

Instead, he walks through the world that he has spent the last years learning, following a familiar path until he arrives at his hut, which looks just as he left it, though glowing faintly silver in the strange light. Half of his lambs are milling about, looking lost, and they bleat happily when they see him.

Even the lambs were affected by Thanos’ snap.

But it’s quiet here and it’s peaceful and Bucky sits in the wild wheat and tall grass, gathering up the half of his flock who followed him here, and he thinks, yes. Yes, this is a good place to wait for Steve to find him again.

So he does.

*

He tends to his lambs, he keeps his little house in good order, he gets used to having two working hands. He pretends not to hear the children sneaking up behind him before they leap on his back, giggling. There are far less of them than there had been before Thanos’ snap (about half, in fact), but they are just as mischievous and sweet here as they had been when they were alive. Sometimes, though, they miss their mothers and their families and the clear blue sky, and that’s when Bucky lets them into his little home and tells them stories, fairy tales that he remembers his sister loving when she was young.

The days all blur together and Bucky doesn’t count them. The sky doesn’t change, it’s always some twilight hour between day and dark, and for the first time, he’s at peace.

Everything has settled into a soft sort of routine.

And then it all gets broken.

He’s on his way back from a walk that had been trailed by three giggling children, all of whom had drifted off to find their friends and family before he’d arrived home. At first, Bucky doesn’t notice anything has changed. He’s gotten so used to being relaxed, to the routine here and to the peace, that his hypervigilance just isn’t there anymore.

And then he notices that his lambs aren’t where they usually are. The little pen is empty, the gate standing open wide, and the blanket that serves as his door has been torn down.

There’s a muffled crash and a curse and Bucky’s eyebrow lifts in a vague sort of interest.

He steps inside his hut and there’s a man there, a panicking, blond mess of a man, currently digging through Bucky’s chest of things. He’s tossing Bucky’s clothing across the room, muttering curses to himself.

Bucky watches, bemused, wondering just what it is the guy could be looking for, and leaning back against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. It takes a few minutes for the guy to realize he’s not alone, and when he finally does look up, he yelps and stumbles backwards away from Bucky, tripping over a pile of Bucky’s clothing and falling in a heap.

“Shit, fuck, warn a guy,” he groans, sitting up and shaking his head as if to clear it. He squints at Bucky in the gloom and says, “Listen, you’ve gotta help me.”

And then Bucky realizes that he knows him – or at least, he’s seen him before.

“You’re Hawkeye,” he says.

Hawkeye – Clint – scrambles to his feet and says, “You know me? Listen. Seriously. You need to help me. I need –” And he gets closer, squinting at Bucky’s face, frowning. He studies him for a moment before his eyes go wide. “Oh thank fuck,” he breathes. “You’re the Winter Soldier. Bucky Barnes. Thank god, okay, listen, you have to help me. I don’t know what the fuck is going on but the sun doesn’t come up and it’s always sorta dark and there’s a fucking jungle cat after me, okay? I can’t find a weapon – I’ve been looking for weapons for so long, but all I’ve found is sticks, and a stick is no match against a jungle cat!”

Bucky is bemused – it’s a lot of talking and he’d gotten used to silence broken only by the bleating of lambs and giggling of children who never had much to say to him. “The panthers are harmless. And there are no weapons here.”

“They are _not_ , Clint says, shoving his hands into his hair and closing his eyes. His face is pale, drawn with anxiety. “One of them’s been chasing me for days. Stalking me. Fuck. Listen. There have to be weapons – you can use your arm! Your arm is the best weapon! We can —”

And then he notices Bucky’s arms – both flesh and blood, as much as anything can be flesh and blood here, and he blinks and stares, shoulders slumping.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” he says again, voice going small. “All I know is that I was having a nap and then I woke up here and suddenly I can hear _everything_ , without my aids, and it’s all too much and too loud and then that fucking cat – and now you, you with your arm, and even I know Wakanda tech can’t regrow a damned arm. What’s happening? Where are we? Why doesn’t the sun ever rise? And why are there so many jungle cats?”

Bucky tries to think of a kind, gentle way to put it, but he decides blunt is best. So he shrugs and says, “You died. We all died.”

Clint just stares at him, eyes wide and shining in the starlight through the window. And then he says, voice high and cracking, “Even the fucking jungle cats?”

Bucky sighs and says, “Sit down. Breathe. I’ll explain.”

Clint collapses on the bed like a puppet who’s lost his strings, and Bucky sits cross-legged on the floor and starts to tell him about Thanos.

*

Clint is twitchy, unable to sit still, horrified by what had happened and not quite believing it. His frenetic energy is disrupting Bucky’s calm routine but he doesn’t know how to tell him to calm the fuck down or find another place to freak out.

Instead, he goes about cleaning up the mess Clint had made, ignoring Clint’s pacing and his panicking.

“Maybe you should rest,” Bucky suggests finally, when the mess is tidied and Clint seems to be getting worse.

“Can’t,” Clint says, shaking his head, prowling to the window again to scan the area. “Jungle cats will get me.”

“Barton. Listen. The panthers aren’t going to touch you. They’re the souls of the Wakandans. They just… watch.”

“They’ve been stalking me for days,” Clint tells him feverishly. His eyes are bloodshot.

It’s exhausting. “Rest,” Bucky tells him. “I’ll keep watch.”

Clint hesitates, and then sits on the edge of the bed. “I tripped on my way in here,” he confesses suddenly. “I hit your gate and it opened. Your sheep all ran away.”

“They’ll be back,” Bucky says easily. “They always come back. Rest.”

Clint looks like he wants to argue some more, but he glances around the hut and then back at Bucky and says, “Just for a bit. Don’t let the cats get me.”

“Scout’s honour,” Bucky says, solemn.

Clint’s eyes narrow. “The chapter on you in my history book never said you were a Scout.”

“Sleep.”

Clint grumbles but obeys.

*

The lambs come back, disgruntled but soon soothed by Bucky’s crooning voice and their little pen, and by the time Clint wakes, peace has come back to Bucky’s little corner of this world.

Bucky is out back, carving a piece of driftwood he’d found, when Clint suddenly sits beside him.

“Do you get hungry here?” Clint asks him, rubbing at his eyes. He seems softer, more at ease, now that he’s rested.

“No,” Bucky tells him.

Clint flinches. “I thought it was just the constant anxiety,” he admits. “Fuck, Bucky, I’d kill for a cup of coffee.”

There’s no coffee, but no need for coffee either, and Bucky lets a comfortable sort of silence fall.

Clint doesn’t seem capable of letting silence last longer than a minute. He gets up, he paces, he picks through a fall of sticks and stones, probably still looking for weapons. He jumps at every noise in the bushes, throws rocks into the trees while mumbling about flushing out the jungle cats.

Bucky tries his best to maintain his peaceful sense of calm, but eventually, he can’t.

He gets up, picks up the smallest, sweetest, sleepiest lamb, and pushes it against Clint’s chest. 

“Here,” he says abruptly. “Hold this. She’s frightened.”

For a moment, Clint stares at him like he doesn’t understand, but then the tension bleeds out of his shoulders and he curls around the little lamb, dropping to the ground to cradle it against his chest. His own anxiety disappears as he starts crooning to the lamb, stroking its wool, and reassuring it that there’s nothing at all to be scared of. 

Bucky finds his seat again, closing his eyes and tipping his head back and breathing in the quiet.

*

“What are you doing?” Clint asks, and Bucky doesn’t look up from where he’s carefully lashing driftwood together.

“Making you a chair,” he says, before holding the twine between his teeth and tugging to tighten the knot. “Figured you’d be staying a while, you’d need somewhere to sit.”

It’s been a few days – or what passes for days, when the sun doesn’t rise or set. They’ve been taking shifts on the bed, though Bucky isn’t sure they need sleep at all anymore. They don’t get hungry or thirsty, but sometimes, Bucky feels exhaustion tugging at him.

“Well,” Clint says, after a moment. “That’s super nice of you. How long, uh, do you think we’re going to be here?”

“You’re here as long as you want to be,” Bucky says with a shrug, grabbing another piece of driftwood. “I’m here until Steve figures this out. Or until he gets here. Or forever.”

Clint looks around, seeming to evaluate, and then says faintly, “I guess I’ll need a chair, then. Thanks.”

Bucky sets the chair on its four legs and frowns because it’s wobbly, but Clint sits down before he can start adjusting the legs.

“It’s cool,” he says, as his lamb – which he’s named Viper – hops up onto his lap. “Like a rocking chair.” He wobbles back and forth experimentally. “Think there’s any purple paint around here?”

*

Sometimes Clint wakes up screaming. At first, Bucky would hurry into the hut to see what was wrong, but soon enough, he realized it was just nightmares. He remembers suffering from them a lot, when he first came to Wakanda.

Eventually, he leaves Clint to wake on his own, which Clint seems to prefer, needing a minute or two to remember where he is and why.

It’s been a while – Bucky can’t tell how long – since Clint first appeared when he staggers out of the hut, collapses in his chair beside Bucky overlooking the lamb pen, and shakes.

“I can’t do this,” Clint says.

Bucky shrugs, easy. “You can leave, if you want.”

“Where would I go?”

“You can go anywhere,” Bucky says.

Clint closes his eyes, still trembling. “I just – I don’t feel real anymore.”

“I’m not sure we _are_ real,” Bucky reasons. “None of this is real. We stopped existing.”

Clint makes a soft, distressed sound, hands scrabbling at the arms of his chair, like he’s looking for something to hold onto. “It’s just – I just – I don’t know how to do this,” Clint gasps, voice broken.

Bucky doesn’t know how to help him, but he remembers people reaching out to help him when he was a mess like this, so he reaches out a hand and says, “Barton, hey. Hey, just…” And takes a careful hold of his wrist.

Clint shudders, hand turning under his and fingers lacing together, holding tightly, like Bucky’s the only thing that’s real here. A few tears run down Clint’s face but Bucky doesn’t comment. He’s too busy marvelling at the feel of Clint’s skin beneath his flesh and blood fingers. It’s been so long since Bucky touched anybody, and longer still since he did it with _that_ hand. He hadn’t even known he’d been missing it.

After that, Bucky reaches out every time Clint gets frightened, and sometimes, when he starts to worry himself.

Steve hasn’t come for him yet.

*

Clint is still convinced that the panthers are out to get him. He stays close to Bucky, shadowing him when Bucky goes for walks along the river or through the rolling fields, jumping at every sound in the bushes. Bucky gives up trying to convince him that the panthers are harmless, and instead just laughs at him when he makes an idiot of himself.

Bucky gets used to Clint being there – to Clint’s incessant need to talk and fill the silence, to his inability to sit still, to the way his lamb follows him, bleating along happily with whatever Clint is saying. He gets used to the little bubble of Clint-shaped chaos that has somehow infiltrated his space. It makes waiting for Steve a little easier.

Time passes. Clint still wakes, screaming, from nightmares, but sometimes, instead of leaving him to wake up alone, Bucky sits beside the bed and rests his hands on Clint’s shoulder or his arm or his hand, giving him a little pressure to ground him. Those times, Clint manages to fall back into a feverish, restless sleep.

Every day, he looks a little rougher, dark circles under his eyes, face paler and sharper, body wracked with more tremors, overwhelmed by constant anxiety.

Bucky doesn’t know how to help other than touch, but something must be done. Bucky’s never seen the panthers that Clint swears watch him while he’s trying to sleep, or stalk him through the tall grass, and he doesn’t know what he can do to make Clint feel safe.

So he finds a sturdy green stick, one that bends without breaking, and starts to carve it. Clint doesn’t even notice what Bucky’s doing until he’s done, until he’s carefully strung it and handed him the bow he’s made, with three perfectly balanced arrows.

Clint takes it automatically and stares at it for so long, Bucky starts to worry Clint doesn’t even know what it’s supposed to be. Finally, though, Clint looks up with wide, dark eyes, his mouth trembling, and says, “You made this?”

“You watched me make it,” Bucky tells him.

“I thought you were just chopping up a stick to pass the time.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Thought it might help you feel safe, might help you sleep,” he says, gruff.

Clint clutches the bow tighter and swallows, nocking an arrow and aiming it at a nearby tree. He pulls the bow to full draw but doesn’t release the arrow, just lets it fall in his hands, still holding both the bow and the arrow tightly.

“Thanks,” he says, voice rough.

Bucky nods and looks away and it’s awkward in a way it hasn’t been for a while and Bucky doesn’t even see it coming when Clint suddenly steps forward and hugs him, hard.

It’s a lot of physical contact for someone who is not used to physical contact, and Bucky sucks in a startled breath, tensing up for a long moment.

Clint doesn’t let go, just clings to him, and Bucky closes his eyes and feels his body give into it, relax against him. He slides his arms around Clint’s waist and doesn’t quite have the courage to hold on as tightly.

“We’re gonna be okay,” Clint tells him, and for the first time, it sounds like he’s starting to believe it.

“Okay,” Bucky agrees. Clint laughs a little shakily against him.

*

The bow is always in Clint’s hand, or beside him, if he’s sleeping. He seems stronger now, more confident in himself now that he has a weapon at hand, and spends hours sometimes shooting and fetching his three arrows, or making himself dozens of others.

The physical contact still happens though, only now, Clint’s not just reaching out when he needs reassurance. It’s casual and almost constant – little touches on Bucky’s shoulders as Clint slips past him in the tiny house, or nudges when Clint makes a particularly painful joke, which is happening more and more.

Bucky’s getting a little worried that he’s getting too used to the touching. It has been years and years since anyone touched him that easily, and he’d gotten used to living without physical contact. Even his years of healing in Wakanda hadn’t involved much touching. In fact, in his entire long life, only Steve had ever touched him like this, like he was worth touching.

Bucky isn’t sure he is.

*

The weather here is changeable, if only a little. Some days it’s warmer than others, and some days, it grows windy, but in all the time Bucky has been here, it hasn't rained. That all changes when thick purple clouds gather, lashing the sky with lightning, making the ground tremble with thunder.

The lambs, who have grown used to the pleasant weather, panic, and Bucky gets Clint to help him round them up into one of the empty huts to keep them out of the rain.

“This doesn’t seem right,” Clint says, nervously staring up at the sky as they duck into Bucky’s hut. “What do you think is happening?”

Bucky isn’t sure. “Could just be weather,” he says.

“Could be Thor,” Clint counters.

Bucky doesn’t know much about Thor, but it could be Steve and whatever Avengers hadn’t been affected by Thanos.

Or it could just be a storm.

Either way, he starts a fire in his little hearth to fight back against the chill in the air, and covers the windows with quilts to keep out the rain as best he can.

Clint keeps pacing, peering out the door and cursing under his breath. It’s raining so heavily, the ground outside has become thick mud, with rivers of water running through, and Bucky is grateful his hut is built on a wooden platform a few inches above the ground.

“Storms like this don’t last long,” Bucky says, but he’s proven wrong as hours slip by and the storm, if anything, grows more fierce.

Bucky busies himself carving, tidying, reorganizing his little stash of stuff, and trying to rest, while Clint keeps a nervous watch at the door, his bow and an arrow held loosely at his side.

The thunder and the rain is kind of soothing, despite Clint throwing off such nervous energy, and Bucky finds himself stretching out on his back, eyes closed, just listening.

And then Clint hisses, “Son of a bitch.”

Bucky turns his head in time to see him dash out of the hut and into the storm, shouting something about jungle cats as he nocks an arrow.

“Fuck,” Bucky snaps, and for a moment, he considers letting Clint go. It would be so much more peaceful here, so much quieter – but Bucky’s grown used to the noise.

He gets up and follows him, because if he lets Clint run off on his own, he’ll probably fall off a cliff or get lost or wind up in some other kind of trouble.

The ground is slick and wet, and Bucky nearly slips a few times as he follows Clint’s obvious path through the mud. He keeps his balance though, and when he catches up to Clint, he finds him standing straight, arrow aimed at an innocent looking knot of shrubbery, his face pale and streaming with rain.

“Hey,” Bucky says, trying to keep his voice soothing. “What did that bush ever do to you?”

“The jungle cat’s hiding in it,” Clint says, radiating tension.

Bucky looks around and doesn’t see any panthers, not even watching from the trees. They’ve probably all fled from the rain.

“I don’t see any,” he says, stepping towards the shrub in question and ignoring Clint’s hissed warning. He shoves the branches aside, blinking away the extra shower of rain he gets in the process, and does not find a panther hiding there. Just an innocent, wet shrub. He steps aside so Clint can see, and, after a long moment, Clint breathes out roughly and lets his stance relax, bow falling to his side.

“I saw it,” he says, a note of pleading in his tone. “I swear I did.”

“Okay, Barton,” Bucky says, stepping closer, running a hand through his dripping hair, slicking it back. “I believe you.”

Clint laughs a bit, with just an edge of hysteria in it. “You don’t.”

“Hey. Hey,” Bucky says, stepping closer. “You’re fine. We’re fine. Breathe.”

Clint ducks his head and shudders and Bucky can’t have that, so he reaches out, sliding his wet hands along Clint’s jaw and tipping his face back up. Touching helps, Bucky knows that, so he shoves his hands into Clint’s wet hair and holds on and thinks, fuck it.

“You just need something to keep your mind off the storm,” he says, his voice going low and gravelly.

Clint blinks rain out of his eyes and licks it off his lips and says, “Do I?”

Bucky hums an agreement and then leans forward and very deliberately bites Clint’s lower lip.

He hears and feels Clint suck in a shaky, startled breath, and Bucky is ready – and halfway expecting – Clint to pull away. Instead, Clint breathes out a, “Yeah, okay,” and pushes forward, kissing Bucky with a feverish and desperate intensity.

It’s wet and slippery and burning hot and it’s been a while since Bucky has done this, so it’s a little overwhelming – so much touching, all at once, where it had been rationed out before in soft, casual brushes of hands and shoulders. 

But it’s good, and a little rough, and Bucky thinks maybe he likes it that way. He breathes out noisily when Clint tangles his fingers in Bucky’s wet hair and tugs, pulling his head back so he can bite at his neck and soothe the marks with his tongue, and Bucky opens his eyes and clings to Clint’s shoulders and –

Sees the glowing eyes of a panther watching them from the shrub Clint had nearly shot.

Bucky doesn’t make a sound, watching the panther as he drags both hands down Clint’s back, tugging up his shirt and pressing the palm of his hand to the skin revealed there. Clint arches into his hand with a touch-starved whine and Bucky says softly, “Come home with me.” He slides his other hand up to cradle the back of Clint’s head, so he can’t turn and see the cat that’s watching them.

“Mm, yes, okay, c’mon,” Clint says, words all tangled together and broken by the way he kept getting distracted by Bucky’s throat.

They stumble home together, and the panther doesn’t follow.

Thunder is still crashing, the sky lit up with the force of the storm, when they trip into the hut. Bucky tugs at Clint’s wet clothes and says, “Take this off.”

“I thought, uh, Bucky Barnes was supposed to be… you know. Uhm. Smooth,” Clint tells him, distracted when Bucky yanks his own shirt up over his head and tosses it aside. His eyes are dark, wide, and he licks his lips, hands tangled up in the hem of his own shirt though he seems to have forgotten that he’d been in the process of taking it off.

Bucky rolls his eyes and says fondly, “You’re a mess,” before tugging it up over his head, dropping it to the floor, and jerking Clint closer with a firm tug on the waist of his jeans. 

Bucky takes Clint with him when he falls back onto the bed, Clint half on top of him, licking his way into Bucky’s mouth. Bucky slides his hands down to Clint’s ass, hiking him up higher so Clint’s thigh slides down between his legs.

Clint swallows back a soft sound and rocks against him, twisting his fingers in Bucky’s hair and pulling – Bucky lets his head fall back with a moan, shoving his hands down the back of Clint’s pants. Clint’s breathing hard when he lifts up a bit to stare down at him. His lips are swollen and his eyes are blown, and a rain drop runs down the bridge of his nose, dropping off the tip to land on Bucky’s cheek.

“Shit,” Clint says. “Shit, Bucky, you’re so…”

It’s too much suddenly, all the places they’re touching and the intimacy of eye contact, and Bucky presses his hand lightly to Clint’s mouth, flips him so Clint is sprawled on his back and Bucky is over top of him. Bucky tugs both of Clint’s hands up over his head and says, “Shh, stay like this, let me…”

“Let you?” Clint echoes, arching up as Bucky shoves a hand down the front of his pants.

“Shh,” Bucky says again, nipping at his jaw in punishment, and Clint closes his eyes and nods frantically, pressing his lips tight together.

It’s better, having full control over Clint’s body, having his mind a little clearer without Clint’s hands on him. It had been too much before – too much like losing control of his body, and Bucky wasn’t sure he could handle that.

This, though, he could handle, though he misses the ache of Clint’s hands pulling at his hair, of his lips and his teeth and the shaky heat of Clint rubbing against him.

Bucky slides down lower and even as he takes Clint apart with his hands and his mouth, he can’t help but feel like he’s putting himself back together again too, if only a little.

*

Clint is panting, still sprawled out on the bed beside him and Bucky feels a warm sort of tension beneath his skin. He’s also incredibly hard, which hasn’t happened, as near as he can tell, since before he became the Winter Soldier.

“Bucky,” Clint says, syllables soft around the edges.

“Shh.”

“But I want…” Clint manages to push himself over onto his side, reaching for Bucky’s hip.

Bucky grabs his hand before Clint can touch him there. “It’s fine,” he says.

Clint blinks at him and looks down at how obviously affected Bucky is. “Are you sure?” he asks.

Bucky can see it on his face – the sudden insecurity, the worry, like he thinks he’s being rejected, and Bucky can’t have that. So he folds Clint’s hand up carefully in his, holding tightly, and saying, “It’s – it’s just too much. Touching, I mean. I’m just, I’m good. Okay? But this is good. Being here, like this.”

Clint hesitates for a moment but then he nods, tightening his grip on Bucky’s hand and saying, “But maybe next time – I mean, if there is a next time, if you want to, maybe I can – I’d like to, you know.” He licks his lips, looking a little hungry. “I’d just like to. If you want a next time. Which I don’t want, of course, unless you want, because—”

Bucky kisses him, unhurried and lazy, and when Clint’s finally given up his awkward babble, he says, “Yeah, Barton. Next time.”

Clint grins at him, slow and bright, and for a minute, it feels like the sun comes out.

*

Bucky sleeps, and when he wakes, Clint is gone and the bed beside him is cold.

It feels a bit harsher than he thought it would – of course Clint is gone. Of course he woke up and realized what he’d done – fallen asleep beside the Winter Soldier, after letting Bucky touch him the way he had, who would be okay with that? Who would stay for that? Who _wouldn’t_ run from the idea of letting themselves be vulnerable and soft next to the Winter Soldier?

Even without his metal arm and in the spirit world, Bucky is still dangerous.

So Bucky shakes it off and pretends that he’s fine and pretends he hadn’t hoped for something soft himself, and leaves the hut already expecting that Clint is long gone, that he’s finally moved on, that Bucky hadn’t cared either way if he stayed.

He finds Clint sitting beneath the narrow overhang of the hut’s thatched roof, frowning fiercely as he tries to lash three wide leaves together through holes he seems to have torn in them.

Bucky pauses, watches him for a moment, lets his mind recalibrate because Clint is still here after all, and Bucky’s not sure what to do with that.

Finally, he says, “What are you doing?”

Clint tugs at a piece of twine with his teeth and then spits it out and grunts, “Making an umbrella.”

It’s still raining. Bucky watches Clint for another moment and says, “You’ve torn holes in the leaves. Even if you get them tied together, it’s gonna leak.”

Clint hesitates, looking at the torn up leaves in his hands and then squinting at the rain. “Well,” he says, shoulders slumping. “Fuck.”

“Why were you – I thought you’d left.”

Clint finally looks at Bucky, blinking a few times before letting the leaves fall to the ground. He frowns. “Where would I go?”

Bucky shrugs. “Anywhere?”

“ _Why_ would I go?”

For a moment, Bucky can’t quite find the words to explain the complicated mess of emotions tangled up in self-doubt, insecurity, and fear. Instead, he says, “Why would you stay?”

“Well. I mean. You built me a chair,” Clint says. “It’s wet now – everything is fucking wet – but it’s pretty damned comfortable. And you made me a bow. I thought, you know. If I made you an umbrella, maybe we’d be kinda even, though you didn’t let me give you a blow job, so. Maybe we’ll never be even. Or maybe, like. Next time, you’ll let me, and then I’ll feel better about things. No pressure, though.” He smiles a little, hopeful, and then kicks at the torn up leaves on the ground. “I guess I suck at making umbrellas, though. Sorry.”

Bucky takes a deep breath, because part of him wants to run away from the mess of Clint Barton with a shitty attempt at an umbrella and an even shittier tendency towards verbal vomit.

He thinks he should say something, should try to explain how panicky letting someone touch him makes him feel, how hard he’s working to let Clint touch him at all, how being touched like that made him feel like he was losing control of his body, how hard he’d work to feel like his body belonged to him again, how he wasn’t ready to let someone else share it.

He can’t find the words for that, though, and when he does manage to speak, his voice is rough. “You afraid of a little rain, Barton?” he says. He reaches a hand out and Clint, still sitting on the ground, brightens and takes it.

He laughs, a little breathless, as Bucky pulls him to his feet. “I could be convinced to like it,” he says, as Bucky tugs him out from under the overhang and into the pouring rain.

It’s warm, for all that it’s pouring, and Bucky is instantly soaked, tipping his head back to shake his hair out of his eyes. Clint yelps and laughs, trying to pull himself free to jump back into the shelter of the hut, but Bucky doesn’t let him go.

“Let me convince you,” he says, and Clint stops fighting when Bucky kisses him, falling against him and clinging to his shoulders instead.

Bucky can work on finding the proper words later.

*

It doesn’t stop raining, and the storm becomes the new normal. They adjust as best they can, and it helps, now that they sleep at the same time. Clint’s nightmares come less when Bucky is beside him.

The lambs don’t seem to mind the storm once they get used to it, and Bucky makes a trip everyday down to the river bank to gather wood to keep the hearth burning. Sometimes Clint comes with him, other times, he claims the rain makes his joints hurt, mostly as an excuse to stay home and dry.

After a few days of rain, they are making their way down to the river together when there is a soft snapping sound in the undergrowth nearby.

Clint tenses up, his breath audibly catching in his throat. “Did you hear that?” he whispers.

“Yes,” Bucky says, squinting into the underbrush. “But it’s probably nothing to worry about.”

Clint looks like he’s about to bolt. “Jungle cats,” he hisses.

“Not a threat,” Bucky says, though he remembers that one panther, watching them from the bushes.

Clint shakes his head wildly. “They’ve been stalking me,” he says. “I told you.”

“Nothing’s going to hurt you here,” Bucky says, and then a sleek black panther leaps from the bushes and slams into Clint’s back, sending him flying head over heels, screaming as the cat drags him to the ground.

Bucky nearly panics, nearly throws himself onto the cat to drag it off of Clint before it can hurt him, but then he realizes that the panther isn’t hurting him, it’s just pinning him to the ground, careful of its claws and its teeth.

And then he recognizes it.

“Shuri,” he says, exasperated as Clint’s screams are muffled by the way the panther has pinned him face down in the dirt. “Seriously?”

She shifts from panther to princess a moment later, cracking up as she rolls off Clint and onto the ground. She’s still laughing when he sits up, spitting grass out of his mouth and rubbing at the mud on his face, staring at her.

“What the fuck,” Clint says, pointing at her and then looking at Bucky. “What the _fuck_.”

“I told you,” Bucky shrugs. “Harmless.”

“Has it – this whole time?” Clint spits, flopping back down to sit near Bucky. Shuri is still snickering, clutching her sides and sitting up. “Who the hell are you?”

“Shuri,” she says brightly. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“T’Challa’s sister,” Bucky says.

“Welcome for what?” Clint asks, still disgruntled and shaking from the after-effects of a near panic attack.

“Saving your life.”

“You stalked me! I thought you were going to eat me!”

“I brought you to the White Wolf,” she says easily, dusting herself off and getting to her feet. 

“The White Wolf,” Clint echoes flatly.

“Me.” Bucky shrugs, awkward.

“There had to have been a better way,” Clint snaps, climbing to his feet.

“I thought he could deal with your histrionics,” she says. “And it was more fun for me this way. By the way, I’ve found another you might know.”

“Steve?” Bucky asks, not quite willing himself to hope.

She shakes her head. “No. A kid. A boy. He’s freaking out. You should probably collect him.” She looks at Clint. “He likes collecting lost things.”

“Why don’t you just herd him here like you did to me,” Clint grumbles.

She looks way, dusting her clothes off loftily, and says, “I tried. I froze. Besides, he’s carving weapons. I don’t want to be stabbed.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, helping Clint to his feet. “Show me where he is,” he says, following her away from the river, Clint muttering angrily behind him. 

*

Bucky doesn’t recognize the kid muttering to himself and tossing a freshly-carved spear onto a pile of spears in a small clearing. All he knows is that the kid is young, probably in his teens, and wet, covered in mud, and pretty skinny.

“Dude,” Clint hisses, coming up behind him and very carefully avoiding Shuri on Bucky’s other side. “That’s fucking Spiderman.”

Bucky’s interactions with Spiderman had been limited to that airport battle a few years before. He’d never seen the kid out of his uniform, and if he had, he probably would have felt even more crushing guilt at having nearly injured him in that fight.

He was barely more than a child.

“Hey,” Clint calls out, before Bucky can even suggest they withdraw and think of a proper strategy here. “Parker! Who’re you planning to stab with those spears, anyway? The balance and weight is all wrong, they’re not gonna fly straight.”

The kid spins around with a yelp, clutching a spear and brandishing it at the shrub they’re hiding in, his eyes narrowing. “Who’s there?” he says, voice cracking. “Come out. Don’t make me hurt you.”

Clint snickers as he stands up, leaving his cover behind, and Bucky’s about to snap at him, yank him back, protect him from the semi-sharp tips of those spears, but as soon as the kid sees him, he drops the weapon.

“Clint,” he says, and suddenly he sounds like he’s about to cry. “Oh thank god. You have to help me, okay, I need to find Mr. Stark. I left him and he was in danger and I can’t find him, I’ve been searching for – god, I don’t even know how long, and –”

“Hey,” Clint says, grabbing the kid’s wrist with an easy motion, tugging him close and hugging him with an ease that makes Bucky feel strangely envious – not that Clint is touching someone else, but that it’s so easy for him to do. “Breathe, Parker. It’s fine. You’re fine. I’m sure Stark’s fine too, dude’s like a cockroach. Impossible to kill.”

“Gotta go,” Shuri says, quiet, and Bucky looks at her.

“Where?”

“My brother’s waiting. Just didn’t want this kid hurting himself before all this goes away.” She hesitates for a moment and then says, “Take care of him. I don’t know what’ll happen, after.”

“After what?”

She smiles at him, impish. “My brother’s found a wizard who says all this is just a waiting game,” she tells him. “The rain is the first sign.”

Bucky shakes his head and says, “First sign of what?”

“You really thought that boy of yours wouldn’t move heaven and earth to get you back this time?” she asks. “Just keep Peter close, and Clint too. They’re walking disasters, I wouldn’t put it past them to stay behind when this world falls apart.”

And then she’s gone and Clint is calling for him.

Around him, the rain just falls harder.

*

They bring Peter back to the hut, which becomes awkward instantly when he walks in, spies the single bed, looks at both of them speculatively, and says, “I can stay in the other one if you guys want, you know, privacy.”

“It’s fine,” Bucky says, just as Clint brightens and says, “Dude, good idea, we need all the privacy. C’mon, I’ll show you the way.”

Bucky’s been using the nearby hut to shelter his wood pile and keep it dry, so they spend the bit of time fashioning a bed out of piles of quilts and pillows they scavenged from distant houses that remained empty, even after Thanos had sent so many people here.

It takes a few more hours before Peter suddenly gasps, points an accusing finger at Bucky, and says, “You’re the one who nearly killed Mr. Stark in Siberia.”

Bucky stares at him. It was so fucking long ago – almost another lifetime ago, and he can’t find it in himself to muster up any sort of defense or explanation for what had happened between him, Steve, and Tony. They’re in the goddamned spirit world, they’ve been erased – and honestly, Bucky’s got bigger sins to worry about than one scuffle with Iron Man.

“In Bucky’s defense,” Clint says, leaning back in his chair and tugging absently on his bow string. “I think it was a mutual ass kicking? Didn’t Tony rip your arm off?”

“Something like that,” Bucky says.

Peter sputters indignantly and he’s sprawled in Bucky’s chair, tucked in the overhang out of the rain, and Bucky has suddenly had enough.

“Going to the river,” he says, shoving his wet hair out of his eyes.

Clint scrambles up. “I’ll come with you,” he says. “Do we need more firewood?”

“Stay with the kid,” Bucky says, ducking around the hut and heading off into the rain before Clint can argue.

*

He stays away until he’s caught a chill, unable to feel his fingers or his toes anymore. He stays away until a little cluster of lambs come tumbling out of the undergrowth looking for him and baaing plaintively.

Bucky gathers them up in his arms and makes his way home. His hut is glowing like an ember in the twilight darkness, and a short distance away, so is Peter’s, so he guesses Clint made the kid at home.

It really is miserable and wet, so rather than shove the lambs back into their pen, Bucky brings them into the hut.

“Hey!” Clint says, scrambling up out of the bed, shaking off all the quilts he’d piled on himself. “You were gone for ages, are you okay? You’re soaked!”

He hovers nearby, looking twitchy, like he wants to reach out and touch but isn’t sure he’s allowed. He’s been doing that lately, acting like he’s not sure he’s able to instigate any of whatever this is between them, and Bucky isn’t sure how to reassure him that he is.

“Warm me up,” he says instead, and Clint brightens with a smile and starts helping him shuck the lambs that have been wrapped up in his coat. Then he shoves Bucky’s coat back off his shoulders, helps him when his cold fingers fumble with pulling his shirt off, and undoes Bucky’s jeans, helping him kick the wet fabric to the floor.

Bucky can’t help but laugh as Clint scolds him, rubbing his skin with a quilt before tossing it aside and herding Bucky into the bed, where he quickly crawls in behind him, aggressively spooning.

“I got worried you weren’t coming back,” Clint confesses, after his scolding and babbling has wound down to a few disgruntled mumbles. There’s a hint of hesitation in his voice, like he isn’t sure he should be saying it.

“Of course I came back,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. “Nowhere else to go.”

Clint hesitates, his hands running up and down Bucky’s arms to warm them. Finally, he says, “Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?”

Bucky thinks for a moment. “Always thought Wakanda was just about as close to Heaven as I could get,” he says at last. He closes his eyes, his shivers easing as Clint’s warmth works its way into his bones. “This is pretty nice.”

“Yeah?” Clint asks, and Bucky can feel his smile in the words. “Which part? The rain? The lambs? The sun that never rises?”

“Being here, like this, with you,” Bucky tells him, because even if the words are hard to say, he figures Clint deserves at least that much reassurance.

His hands stop stroking and instead cling to Bucky’s biceps. “Oh,” he says, after a moment, resting his forehead against Bucky’s shoulder blade. “Is this – this is okay? Sometimes you don’t like when I touch you.”

Bucky turns to face him, knocking Clint’s hands off his arms. “I always like when you touch me,” he confesses, pressing Clint’s hands to his chest. “Just, sometimes, when it’s too much – it just gets overwhelming. Makes me feel like I’m not in control. But I… I want to be okay with it, I want –”

“Hey,” Clint says, soothing. “Bucky. It’s okay. I’m not gonna force you into anything – I get it, I do. I just wanted to make sure – I know your options are pretty limited here and – I’m just glad you don’t mind me hanging around, and…”

“Way I figure it, my options are about half the universe,” Bucky says. “And I still chose you.”

Clint’s cheeks are pink and he looks like he wants to squirm away, to laugh it off. Bucky presses Clint’s hands more firmly against his chest just in case he gets the urge to run.

“But if we get rescued – if this is just temporary,” Clint says, hesitating before adding, “And Steve and Dr. Strange or whoever else somehow fix this, and it all goes back to how it was, like none of this ever happened – well, I want you to know that even though it sucks that I’ve been erased and trapped in the spirit world, I’m gonna be real sad to forget all this happened.”

Bucky smiles, slow. “I’m pretty good at remembering,” he says. “Especially the good stuff. If Steve somehow manages to fix this, I won’t forget – and I’ll remind you. Every day. Until you get sick of me bursting in on you saying shit like, “Hey, remember when I didn’t even stab you after the 17th consecutive day of you waking me up bitching about the lack of coffee in the spirit world?””

Clint looks hesitantly hopeful. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, Barton. Promise.”

And it’s a promise he has every intention of keeping.

*

When Steve finally comes for him, the spirit world falls apart with a shriek of multicoloured lights, cracks appearing in the sky, and the world crumbling around him. It’s a mess of chaos, of Clint screaming his name, of terrified lambs crying out as the world disappears from under their feet.

And then it’s nothing.

Bucky wakes up to a clear blue summer sky, the distant trill of bird song, and Steve’s face, drawn, stark, pale with exhaustion, and beautifully alive.

And he remembers everything.

“What did you do?” Bucky croaks, and Steve’s face cracks with the force of his relief.

“You’re back,” he says, hands scrambling desperately at Bucky’s shoulders, the collar of his shirt, his arms. “Oh god, Bucky, I thought I’d lost you again.”

Steve yanks him close, squeezing him and mumbling into his hair and Bucky takes a moment to recalibrate, to adjust to the sunlight, the breeze, the real world – the metal arm twisting into his torn up shoulder, hanging too heavy at his side.

“Where’s Clint?” he says, but Clint isn’t there at all.

It’s chaos for a long while. Half the world needs to readjust to being back in the real world, and the other half has to adjust to their loved ones being back again. It’s a mess. 

Steve tries to explain what happened – what he and Tony did to bring things back the way they were. There was an epic and interplanetary battle, Thanos lost, the Infinity Gauntlet is stashed somewhere where it won’t ever be found. Bucky is sure the details matter. He just doesn’t care enough to listen to them.

He struggles with reality, a bit. He struggles with the pain of having his metal arm wired into his nervous system again. He struggles with feeling over-sensitive — everything is too loud, too bright, moving too fast. There is too much to do – governments in chaos, power grids in shambles. He runs himself ragged cleaning up the mess.

And before he knows it, six months have gone by and he’s still fucking waiting for Clint to show up. Or call him. Or whatever.

He knows Clint is somewhere – safe and back from the spirit world and probably just as fucked up about it as Bucky is. Natasha says he’s at his farm – somewhere safe and quiet and slow, like Wakanda had been for Bucky. 

And half of Bucky thinks that if Clint’s still hiding out there, then who is he to interrupt that peace? 

Peace is hard to come by, he knows, and he doesn’t begrudge Clint choosing his peace over Bucky.

It’s just – after the initial chaos is gone and Bucky can pause to breathe, to shake off the lingering, prickly sensation of existing in a world that’s full of stimulation at every second, he’s just tired. He hurts. He wants to rest. He dreams of the soft and secret spirit world.

And the real world is back in balance and Steve has even stopped to breathe, moved back to the Avengers facility, so Bucky goes with him.

But it’s hard and he feels like he’s going to vibrate to pieces and he supposes maybe Clint’s never going to show up, to be ready to come back to the real world – to Bucky.

So fucking sue him if he’s a little bitchy about it.

It’s Natasha who finally calls him on it, after a week back at the Avengers Facility, when she comes across Bucky in the range, angrily shooting at targets and not even caring if he hits them.

“Steve’ll be pissed if you waste all the ammo again,” she says.

“Steve can go fuck himself.” Bucky loads another clip.

Natasha watches for a while and then turns to go. “You know,” she says, as she slips out the door. “It’s a bit petty to be this pissed off when you didn’t even have the nerve to actually tell him you’re breaking up with him.”

“What?” Bucky asks, but she’s already gone.

He stares at the doorway for a long moment, gun hanging loose at his side, and then swears. She’s got it all wrong, doesn’t she? He didn’t leave Clint. He _waited_ for Clint. But Clint never showed up – Clint made the choice, not Bucky. 

Didn’t he?

But Bucky thinks back to the time they’d spent together in the spirit world, to every time Clint had reached out to him but Bucky had pulled away, to every time Clint had said something stupid that showed just how bad his self-esteem was.

And Bucky had promised to remind him if he forgot, but Clint _hadn’t_ forgotten – but maybe Bucky should have made more of an effort to remind him anyway.

Bucky swears again and then puts his gun away, heading for the hangar.

Of course Clint wouldn’t come for him. He probably didn’t think Bucky wanted him to.

*

He steals a quinjet – requisitions it. He’ll bring it back – probably.

He lands it in an empty pasture somewhat where he knows Clint’s farm is, and leaves it there, not bothering to cloak it. 

It’s quiet here, and the hush goes a long way to soothing Bucky, to easing the feeling that he no longer fit in his skin. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply and goes in search of Clint.

He finds Clint cursing tiredly at a flock of lambs who looked six months older than they had last time Bucky had seen them. 

Bucky watches him for a long moment but Clint doesn’t become aware of him until the lambs do, baaing and tumbling over each other as they bolt towards Bucky, tails wagging excitedly.

“Hey, guys,” Bucky says, crouching and reaching out for them, laughing as they trip over each other in an attempt to climb onto his lap.

When he looks up, Clint is staring at him like he’s seen a ghost.

“I’m not wearing my ears,” Clint says, voice a little loud. “It’s too loud. Hi.”

Bucky gets to his feet and considers Clint for a moment, trying to think of what he wants to say. 

“I was waiting for you,” he says at last, and Clint watches him carefully, reading his lips.

“Why?”

Bucky rolls his eyes, because Clint looks just as unsure as he had before, and Bucky can’t find the words, again. Even if he did find them, Clint wouldn’t hear them. But Bucky had promised to remind him, so he steps closer, lambs tangling around his feet, and tugs Clint closer.

“Tell me you didn’t forget,” Bucky says, and Clint’s still watching his lips. He bits his lip, meets Bucky’s eyes, and shakes his head, hesitating only a moment.

Bucky kisses him, and when Clint wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, not even hesitating at the scarred place where the metal meets flesh, Bucky doesn’t want to pull away from his touch at all. It grounds him, makes him feel real in a way he hasn’t felt since the spirit world fell apart.

Bucky thinks, as he kisses Clint to remind him of everything he’d promised in the spirit world, that this place, filled with quiet and peace and his goddamned flock of lambs, might just be the closer to Heaven than anything else he’s ever known.

And he’s going to remind Clint of that as many times as he needs to until Clint can remember it on his own.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, we should be friends on [ Tumblr.](http://lissadiane.tumblr.com/)


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